Subash Nambiar, VP and Country Manager for India, PTC

Tell me something about yourself
I have been with PTC for over a year now, in my role I oversee the PTC’s overall business in India and am responsible for strategic growth, leading key partner relationships and strategic customer focus. I have over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining PTC I was a Senior Director – Technology Sales at Oracle and also held senior positions at IBM and LG Soft.

How was your 1 year experience working with the CAD industry?
My experience so far has been great! My vision for PTC is to reach out to manufacturing companies and product developing companies in India and help them achieve sustained product and service advantage through PTC’s world-class CAD, PLM and SLM Solutions across the entire product lifecycle. The introduction of Creo 3.0, Smart Connected Products and application of Internet of Things has helped us achieve this goal.

I look forward to drive PTC’s growth in India through strategic sales and better customer relations.

PTC is in a space that allows for intense competition from other players, what is PTC really bringing on board to its customers and partners?
PTC is the pioneer in product lifecycle management in India. PTC India has been successfully selling , implementing and supporting various products like Creo, Windchill , Servigistics and Arbortext and now Creo 3.0 – SLM products directly and through SSP (Strategic service Partners ) like ITC, TCS etc. We have been encouraging our partners to imbibe Enterprise consulting using our Service Advantage program to drive value based selling to Enterprises. The customer gets a complete solution either directly from PTC or through partners from Consulting, product positioning, implementing and getting the solution advantage – meeting/exceeding customer expectations.

Apart from this consulting and implementation, we also provide high end training to adopt our e-learning tools supported by trainers in precision learning programs. PTC University Academy program supports this initiative and many customers are enjoying the benefit in getting full advantage of the product through this knowledge.

With lots of productivity enhancements in Creo 3.0, like improved Multi-CAD Data Handling Capabilities, do you think it would be a greater success than previous versions?
Yes, it will be a greater success than previous versions. We expect all our customers to adapt to Creo 3.0 in the coming years. With PTC Cry 3.0, PTC introduced new Unite™ technology, which significantly enhances the ability to use CAD files from a variety of systems directly in PTC Creo. It also empowers innovation through more powerful; seamlessly integrated concept design tools, ensuring efforts undertaken in concept design can be fully reused in the detailed design process. Key productivity enhancements within the release further add to customers’ ability to focus on higher levels of innovation and product quality.

Also, we will continue to deliver on their strategy. PTC’s ground breaking Unite technology addresses the data and process-related challenges of CAD consolidation. Unite technology in PTC Creo 3.0 enables CAD data of varying formats to be used directly in the PTC Creo Parametric™, Creo Direct™, Creo Simulate™, and Creo Options Modeler™ apps. As a result, this release enables significant efficiencies to be achieved when consolidating multiple CAD systems onto PTC Creo, as well as when collaborating with others using different CAD tools.These efficiencies enable improvements in on-time delivery; product quality and desirability by allowing design teams to spend more time innovating and less time on non-value add tasks such as recreating design intent and redundant file management

What you think about the companies that are still working on Pro/E Wildfire? Is there any communication gap that prevented them to switch to latest versions? What steps are taken to make these companies aware about Creo capabilities?
Many PTC users, for various reasons, stay with an older version. They are happy with the capabilities of Pro/E and have trained man power giving optimum results. But, many customers have upgraded to Creo since its launched. PTC Creo is much powerful, reliable and easy to use modeling tool that helps user to optimize productivity across a full range of mechanical design tasks.

We are conducting various events, webinars to educate and train our customers on the latest tools. Also, offering them the e-learning packages with over 6,000 hours of online training courses available at their fingertips.

How the IoT ( Internet of Things) is Transforming the Meaning of Product development. Help us understand the benefits of this and what impact would this have on the Indian customers?
Manufacturing companies are looking at innovative methods to meet and exceed customer expectations. Traditionally the products manufactured are related to only hardware, but at present software, as it evolved, began delivering a variety of utilities, and software and service have started generating a larger proportion of a product’s value.

Manufacturing companies are now looking at Internet of Things (IoT) to provide new services by connecting to the internet and companies. By 2025, economic impact of IoT worldwide is expected to be at least US $ 2.7 trillion and more than 80% of the manufacturing companies are expected to use IoT applications.

Indian manufacturing companies, particularly exporting will gain substantially because of adoption of IoT platform in the international market

PTC is the company that developed the first parametric, feature-based 3D CAD tool, and has started offering a new set of services by combining existing solutions with IoT.

In the IoT space, PTC offers ThingWorx Platform and design, specifically to leverage the internet world of People, Systems and Things. ThingWorx is the 1st Application Platform for the Internet of Things, enables users to Develop, Run, Iterate and Innovate Internet of Things Application 10 x faster. ThingWorx platform consists of a suite of tools and features to help an organization to quickly create connected applications. The Suite includes:

1. ThingWorx Composer (End to End Application modeling Environment)- makes it easy to model all things required for a connected application.

2. Codeless Mashup builder – Drag and drop application builder, reduces development time. These are some of many differentiators from other companies

Do you see high growth in PTC product sales after the launch of Make in India campaign, as PTC has a high presence in SPM manufacturers, OEMs, machine tools, etc.
Growth is inevitable from the Make in India campaign, both owing to the growth in domestic demand for Indian manufactured goods as much as the growth in exports. For example, amongst the automotive OEM, the country is emerging to be the 4thlargest commercial vehicle consumers in the world. This essentially entails expansion in capacity and thus, the need for technology from vendors such as PTC applied across the product life cycle.

How is PTC Windchill market in India? How has the response been from Indian companies for PTC’s PLM Solutions?
Within today’s highly competitive, geographically dispersed design and manufacturing environments, effectively managing product content has never been more important. The consequences of using outdated versions, losing files or failing to properly incorporate engineering changes can be severe, resulting in revenue and profitability declines as well as market share erosion.

PTC Windchill is the central repository for all product information. PTC Windchill remembers the entire history for every piece of product related content such as CAD models, documents, technical illustrations, embedded software, calculations and requirement specifications as well as the relationships between content. And, search tools within PTC Windchill to help you quickly find the information you need.

India is a very important market for PTC. We have customers in India who have invested in our flagship 3D product, Pro E for the past 20 years. Like any other Industry, Manufacturing Industry particularly Automobile Industry faces a lot of competition, both from domestic and international companies. Most of the companies look for reducing their manufacturing cost and India is no different. PTC has products in CAD, Application Life Cycle Management (ALM), and Service Lifecycle Management (SLM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and now platform for Internet of Things (IoT) to meet customer expectations. In the last three decades, PTC has grown from a CAD company to a software product and service solution provider for Manufacturing companies and many Indian companies are using PTC products for meeting their industry transformation.

How are you doing things differently in India, given the unique requirements of the market?
As I said India is a very important market for us and we have witnessed tremendous growth in India over the years. We try to deliver our best service to all our customers to ensure their satisfaction with our products and services. That is the reason why we launched core 3.0 in India as well. The main advantage of Creo 3.0 is the Unite™ technology, which significantly enhances the ability to use CAD files from a variety of systems directly in PTC Creo. PTC Creo 3.0 also empowers innovation through more powerful; seamlessly integrated concept design tools, ensuring efforts undertaken in concept design can be fully reused in the detailed design process. Key productivity enhancements within the release further add to customers’ ability to focus on higher levels of innovation and product quality.

The Unite technology that is being offered with our new product has truly integrated concept design tools, and continued emphasis on day-day productivity gains, this new release empowers our customers to bring greater efficiency to their product development process. We aim to deliver maximum customer satisfaction through our new products and service and we believe Creo 3.0 could do the best for the same.

What are your views on Direct modeling software, PTC Creo Direct? Why parametric modeling is still preferred choice in the Industry?
PTC Creo Direct is a stand-alone app that enables casual CAD users to create new geometry or modify any existing 3D CAD design, regardless of file format. Direct interaction with the geometry makes it easy for anyone to learn and use. That’s why it’s the ideal tool for people in concept design, analysis and manufacturing ― or for anyone else who’s new to 3D CAD or uses it infrequently. Because working with PTC Creo Direct is quick, flexible and intuitive, it’s ideally suited for tasks such as generating proposals, defining the initial design for tooling fixtures or capturing design input from customers in the field. By enabling better collaboration with your extended team, the software encourages innovation and enables your company to respond better to changing customer needs.

Direct modeling software is the best service to achieve faster design cycles by enabling more users to access and use 3D CAD data, including third-party design components. It has features like editing work with direct cut-and paste, push-and-pull and drag-and-drop technique and also to explore concepts and variations using a direct 3D CAD approach.

Parametric modeling revolutionized the approach to solid modeling. Engineers could build intelligence into models so that when a change was made, all the affected features would automatically update, saving time by avoiding manual and tedious updates to every little thing that changed. The convenience and features that parametric modelling provides makes it the preferred choice among customers.

With increased demand for simulation technology among Indian enterprises? How do you plan to tap the Indian market?
India is a growing market for us and we have a huge customer base here, we have been supporting customers for the past two decades. We have grown as a CAD company to a complete product and service advantage company, providing solution in CAD, ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), PLM (Product Life Cycle Management), and now IoT (Internet of Things) i.e., from manufacturing a product -from the design stage to retiring the product, we have solutions.

We are reaching out to our existing and new customers through our partners, and direct sales team and offering our complete suite of products so that they are able to use the same and take advantage of the technology to improve their product lifecycle roadmap.

Also, we have a huge focus in training and creating well trained resources in India, in order to meet the trained technical resources with enhanced knowledge by using PTC products. We have more than 100 Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) and more than 1000 colleges across India who uses PTC products as part of their training curriculum using PTC’s Global Standard Curriculum and training methodologies.

Could you talk about key focus areas for PTC’ India R&D center?
PTC has been re-engineering its traditional products, upgrading the developed ones keeping in the mind aspects like collaboration, cloud, mobility, sharing and communication. Our development teams in Pune, India is contributing significantly to its new business model.

Anything that you would tell design professionals about PTC Live Tech Forum 2015?
PTC Live Tech Forum 2015, the annual event being hosted by PTC for many years is one of the most unique and awaited technology events in India,PTC Tech Forum brings together PTC solutions experts and best-in-class industry presenters to exhibit their latest technology updates, present real-world best practices, and showcase how to use PTC solutions more effectively.

The event is a great platform to gain insight into PTC’s technology strategy and vision, learn best practices from peer companies leveraging PTC solutions. We would also like to showcase our offerings in Smart Connected Products and Internet of Things (IoT) to the participants and to educate them about its advantages.

The event unveils after 2 years in 2015 and we are bringing this event to 2 cities in India; Pune and Chennai during April.

Anything that you would like to highlight, related to India/Asia market.
India is emerging and is often coined in the term of the BRIC nations. As one of the leading economists of our times Ruchir Sharma suggests in his book, Breakout Nations – India’s growth story is to sustain and be realized despite the many external challenges. Manufacturing is a core contributor to India’s economic progress, and thus in the next decade or so Indian manufacturing outfits are not only going to improve the ‘process’ side of manufacturing but also “innovation”. PTC as leading technology providers for manufacturers will be playing a major role in the India’s growth story, and we at PTC India are very excited to witness the transformation in Indian manufacturing that will unfold with time.

Thanks Mr. Subash Nambiar for your time for the discussion. Hope our reader find it interesting to read this article. If you have any question, please write on the mail id given below and we will be glad to answer.